


Dreams of their father

by Marie_L



Category: Dark Angel
Genre: Fake Religion, Found Family, Gen, Genetic Engineering, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-28
Updated: 2017-05-28
Packaged: 2018-11-06 03:33:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11027748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marie_L/pseuds/Marie_L
Summary: When the runes spread unexpectedly, White and Max find they need each other.





	Dreams of their father

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Hecate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hecate/gifts).



1/Max.

 

The runes of skin make Max dream. Visions are shoved into her brain in a rare fit of rest: black inky lines snake from the precise barcode into pictograph letters, an oozing alphabet tinged with improbable holiness, their meaning illuminated in the margins of her mind, just beyond her conscious grasp on the edges. A new sort of brand, meant for angels instead of cattle, living tissue illuminated instead of burned in.

Within the dream they migrate, crawling across her skin and beyond, and suddenly she is not alone. They infect Joshua first, then Dix, then Gem, then Alec. All the older transgenics, none of the confused younger survivors now flocking to Terminal City. Sandeman’s children, she is meant to know. Some living, many dead, the little gift is left by their creator and Father.

Some of Sandeman’s children weren’t even of Manticore. Max also knows somehow that their pursuer is in here somehow, although she doesn’t yet see him clearly. His child, yes, the one she rescued. Sandeman’s grandson. The sigils creep in via the father. He’d probably burn them off just for spite, just because they marred his image of supposed perfection. Even something preplanned and destined can be despised.

A last thought fades: _Infection-invasion-poison_ is wrong. It’s not a parasite despite all appearances, nor a stain, not a foreign substance at all. It’s been part of them all along.

Max opens her eyes just as a grinning Joshua bounds into her bunkroom, eager to show off the new symbols emerging under fur on his chest.

“Knew I wasn’t so special,” she mutters, to the fading dream more than herself. “Whatever.” She crinkles her mouth upwards for Joshua, one of the few people she’ll always plaster on a smile for, no matter the adrenaline running in her overengineered brain.

 

2/White.

 

Back in the ticky-tacky house now empty of his wife and son — doomed sons, the majority by his own hand — Ames White too is trapped in the mental prison of slumber. Unusual. Mundane human anxiety had been eliminated from his mental frameworks in adolescence, and yet here he is, in something not quite like a nightmare.

Less surprisingly, the content of the dream is Ray. His stolen son, snatched not just from him but from Ray’s glorious destiny as a superior breed of human. Technically Ray’s still superior, wherever he is, but without the training to carve those abilities from rough dense ore to shimmering sword, all that genetic perfection will go to waste.

That’s not the primary point of the nightmare, however. It’s a feral sort of alarm, originating deep in the limbic system, fight or flight. At first White doesn’t see anything, just senses the presence of others. Many others, and at first he takes them for the hooded figures that tested and trained and nearly killed him through his own childhood. Just a remnant of that first snakebite, he supposes. But then the dream shifts and White realizes that the others are _animals._ Not even subpar wild-type humans, but his Father’s abominations, those products of dripping chemicals, slave wombs, and stolen DNA.

The Conclave has long known that Sandeman used his own DNA as the backbone for many of the “innovative” features of his transgenic products. Strength. Endurance. Tolerance of pain, both mental and physical. Ability to be molded into whatever was required, without the pesky wild-type tendency to lose their minds. Now that White has access to Manticore’s internal memos, he’s privately impressed with how much hell has been dealt out to a horde of mutant children without rendering them inoperable. For the most part. White’s heard a few of them have indeed snapped, but even with careful breeding there’s always some off-types — just look at CJ. And the transgenics most certainly have not been carefully bred. _Engineered_ instead; he practically spits the term.

White hates them all. He hates them even more knowing that they share a piece of his legacy, and that of his son. Without that knowledge this assignment would merely be pest control, but with the connection to the Familiars it’s _personal._

Even through his total dedication to the abominations’ destruction, however, White can see an unusual spark in X5-452. So he’s unsurprised when she comes barreling into the black dream, as she’s wont to do in real life, gripping Ray’s hand. Every inch of her visible skin is covered in Minoan runes, while Ray’s covered in barcodes, giving the appearance of some demented Techhead tribal tattoo.

He can’t help reading the runes, those excerpts from their holy books, perverted and defiled.

_Reach a branch far out, and let every kind of leaf grow._

_For the simple human only, for the evil bred true, and for the wise turn to the creatures of the earth._

_Blessed is the one who finds wisdom in the cat and the spider, the fish and the bird, the lowliest fly and the highest girl._

_Open your mouth and proclaim,_ _“The son shall not follow the father, but shall follow his own righteousness.”_

It’s like a bizarro land of the Bible: Almost, but upon examination the antithesis of truth.

452 rests a hand on Ray’s bare but marred shoulder. The boy reaches out, but not quite towards him. White stretches from his dream non-body to catch him, pluck him somehow from the claws of the she-creature. But when their hands touch, he senses the black ooze of contamination. With sudden, unexpected fear he looks down and sees the ink running up onto his arm. He tries to let go, but he’s now merged with his son, and by extension the transgenic too, unable sever himself. The impurity flows both ways.

“You’re Sandeman’s kid too, despite the name autopsy,” 452 says in that infuriatingly snarky voice. It’s so annoying that he could swear she’s actually there. “One of us abominations. Get used to it.”

White wakes up with his heart pounding in his chest. And he experiences more terror than he’s felt in twenty years when he looks down at himself, and the desecrated runes were still there, even with his eyes wide open.

 

3/Max and Terminal City.

 

The spread of the runes changes the urgency of solving the mystery. When it was just Max everyone could write it off as just another freak quirk in a sea of oddities, but now the message from their absent Father is pointed even to the most broken among them. Everyone with any memory of Sandeman spreads rumors and stories, of books passed through the bars of cages, of extra tidbits of tasty food, of small acts of kindness among the horror. Myth and fantasy, truth be told, for a people who want to believe that somehow somewhere a Father-God cares about them.

In none of the tales is there any indication of the Cult, from which Max knows Sandeman was born. She wonders, sometimes, if their creator ever really escaped the Cult’s mentality. What’s genetic engineering but breeding for so-called superiority, sped up for modern times? The inclusion of animal traits — notably gratuitous, before the X-series — could be Sandeman thumbing his nose at his origins, and their obsession with purity. Like a teenager escaping the restrictions of a conservative religion and peevishly doing the opposite of what he was taught, but whose ultimate values unconsciously stay the same.

She doesn’t share these thoughts with anyone. Not even Alec, who’d be sympathetic, and definitely not Joshua. Terminal City is having a moment of fond nostalgia, and she doesn’t want to ruin it. But privately, locating their dear old Father shoots to the top of Max’s mental list. There must be a reason the messages are appearing now.

One thing becomes clear about Sandeman: His alliance with Department of Defense was purely for financial convenience at the beginning. Numerous stories circulate among the Freaks of Sandeman telling them that they weren’t solely meant to be soldiers, that they had a greater destiny. Among the X5s, though, only Max has such a recollection. He was on his way out by the time the fives came along, Max decides, booted from his own company by Lydecker and other DOD factions. Perhaps even the Cult had hand in it. Let the military kill off the genetic abominations in repeated missions, as many as possible.

In the end she puts Logan on the case, even though his hacking powers are much diminished, and even being in the same room is awkward as hell. They need better information, though. They need renewed surveillance and vigilance. Because one thing Max is sure of from the dreams: Ames White, Sandeman’s _real_ son, is connected to the runes. Soon, he’ll be coming.

 

4/White and Freak Nation.

 

White knows now he must confront his disgraced father. This turn of events is most alarming: evidence of direct genetic manipulation of _his_ genome, as if _he_ might be another damn freak. The Conclave will order his cleansing from the the Earth if it turns out to be true.

Unfortunately, he has no idea where Father is, or even if he’s still alive. The Conclave very well may have cleansed him at some point in the past fifteen years, and the one person who would know the most — his flawed weakling brother — is now dead. Last White understood, Sandeman was in Seattle, and the freaks had found the home and were using it as a hideout before Terminal City. But the abominations themselves are likely searching with renewed interest, so to watch them is to watch for his Father.

Sneaking into Terminal City, even with his well-known sworn-enemy face, is surprisingly easy. He borrows a high-end IR detector to hunt for hidden electronics, and slowly snakes in. The freaks have established many routes in and out through the bombed-out industrial zone surrounding the Superfund site they called home. Craftily, they have no intention of trapping themselves in one place, so there are many avenues of approach to the intelligence center where 452 hangs out. White muses that he should just send in a brigade of miniature robogrenades and blast all of Terminal City out of the sky, but it’s been decided that would draw unnecessary public attention to the mission. Give it six months, and the world will either forget about the transgenics, or storm the gates themselves.

He almost makes it to the side lab where he’s planning to drop the bugs when he’s spotted. By Logan Cale of all people, that traitor to his race. He almost makes it around a corner into an exit tunnel, when the crackle of 452’s stun gun renders him unconscious.

“Are those … tattoos?” he hears a voice say, some interminable time later. Hands and feet duct taped behind him. An actual headache, so some damage has likely been done. “Wait, are we members of the Cult now or something? I mean, a snake bite, I can take that.”

“No to both questions,” 452 replies. “They showed up outta the blue on his skin, just like us. Wake up, White.”

She squirts him in the face with some cold water, and he opens his eyes. Doesn’t even pretend to wake up.

“Looks like you’ve got some transgenic in you, tough guy,” she says. “Who knew? Not you, I’m guessing. Sucks to have a twisted geneticist for a Dad, doesn’t it.”

“At least he was an actual father for me,” White retorts. “A human relationship, not grown in lab.”

“As human as you cult freaks manage to get. It’s true, Sandeman was somewhat lacking in the warm and fuzzies department, from what we all remember. Better at creating monsters than taking care of them. What else do you think he slipped into you? Extra super-strength? Purple fur coming out your ass? Your own personal barcode for your fortieth birthday? X1-001 has a nice ring to it.”

White rolls his eyes at her petulance. “There’s no evidence of significant meddling. My dear brother, whom you’ve met, wasn’t exactly a member of special forces, now was he?”

“Bet you’re too scared to look for any evidence. Your friends with the snakes probably know nothing about this, do they.”

White remains silent for a second. “Look, 452, in the end, we have similar goals here. So how about a detente for now. Work together until we find him, or at least don’t get in each other’s way. I’ll call off the transgenic witch hunt, and you’ll call of your attack…dogs,” he says, glancing at the dog-man in the corner. “I have some questions I need to ask Sandeman, and obviously you do too.”

“Can ask,” says the creature. “Logan found Father.”

“Joshua!” hisses 452. “I wasn’t really planning on bringing Mr. Nazi along. Let him rot in his own hypocrisy.”

“Given Sandeman’s condition, we might need him. He might recognize his own son, when he doesn’t recognize anyone else anymore,” Cale puts in.

“Condition? _What_ condition?” White hisses. He’s in no position to order any of them around, and yet it’s still infuriating that they don’t fall in line. No discipline, no honor.

This time it’s 452 who rolls her eyes, and hauls him to his shackled feet without saying a word.

 

5/Max, White and the Father of the Transgenics.

 

As it turns out, Sandeman never left Seattle. Of all the places he could have gone into exile, including a much cushier life just over the border in Vancouver, he chose the most restricted, most economically depressed location in the U.S. Max wonders if it’s a self-imposed punishment. Or perhaps he wanted to stay near at least one of Manticore’s facilities.

At this point it no longer matters, because Sandeman’s prison is entirely in his mind.

Logan tracks him down, ironically enough, through the standard government DNA markers used to replace fingerprints. They have DNA from CJ, and they have DNA from White, and the rest is a matter of statistics. Although there’s no full-blown geneticist lurking in the scientific ruins of Terminal City, many of the freaks have been used as lab techs through the years. Why hire people for lowly positions, Manticore’s philosophy went, if you have your own homegrown supply of intelligent slaves? So while they don’t have the means for full sequencing in their primitive encampment, running some markers and hacking a database proves to be easy-peasy.

Sandeman’s found to be living in a high-end, high-security facility for wealthy victims of Alzheimer’s. Paid for via a trust, since according to pilfered logs no one ever comes in to check on the quiet man with little memory. Max and Alec both immediately suspect he’s faking it for the cover, but Sandeman’s medical records, including brain scans, indicate severe loss of prefrontal and temporal cortex. They’ll be lucky if he even knows what a transgenic is.

Joshua unfortunately must be left behind for security reasons, but Max vows she’ll get him in to see his Father, one way or another. For now it’s her, Logan, and Alec and Gem posing as cops. And White, the dutiful prisoner son. Now that he’s along for the ride, their new cover story is trying to pry loose some information for a police case. Max just marches right in like she knows what she’s doing. Ninety-nine percent of the time, confident bluffing works. This time is no exception.

He’s a shell of a person, propped up in an armchair remarkably like the one found in Joshua’s house, staring blankly at a television screen. Max thinks she recognizes him, but even with enhanced recall, it’s hard to tell from a memory knocking about in the head since the age of five. The nurse reports that in previous years he seemed to have only passing interest in the news, but in the past six months he’s been fascinated by local events, enough that they leave him with the satellite on most of the day.

“Since the transgenics were made public,” Alec mutters. Max agrees. It’s not a terrible sign.

But Sandeman doesn’t even flicker an eye towards them as they enter the room. Maybe they should have brought Joshua along after all, he with the famously distinctive face. Max shoves White to his knees in front of him, blocking the screen from view.

“Do you remember him, Father? Ames, your son.”

Sandeman seems to focus slightly, but then turns his eyes up. “Son. Child,” he croaks.

“Pocket. Wallet,” White says. Apparently they are all telegraphing their speech today. Max digs the wallet out, though, and finds an older photo of Ray. “He looks like me, at that age,” White explains simply.

Max waves the photo in front of him. “Look familiar? Your son, Ames. Sorry I don’t have a picture of CJ.”

“CJ,” Sandeman slowly drawls. “Ames. Children. So many children.”

“Yeah. We’re you’re children too,” Max says softly. It’s the first time she’s admitted that out loud, including herself among the category. “The transgenics? Manticore you mean?”

“Manticore… died. Fire.”

“That’s right,” says Max. “I’m the one who set the fire and set everyone free. X5-452. Do you remember me?”

“Many of my children died. They killed so many. Soldiers. Soldiers die, to toughen them up. My son dies, to toughen him up.”

“I’m not dead yet,” says White. “And my son is alive too. And, uh, not in the Conclave.” He glances at Max, and she can’t interpret the look. It’s not the disgust from before.

“Died in spirit. And now they cut them down in the streets instead of the training camps. All for nothing.”

“What _did_ you make us for, if not for soldiers?” Max asks. “What were we freaks to you? Just some mad scientist experiment?”

“Soldiers, yes. My soldiers. For use against the Conclave. There had to be a better way. Ordinaries… not up to the task. Break them with their own DNA.”

White growls, or maybe its a half-moan. But it makes sense to Max. He wanted to one-up the Cult. Contaminate and beat them with the thing they valued the most.

“Sandeman. Father,” Max says, gently again, inches from him so her face fills his field of vision. “What’s with the Minoan runes? What message were you trying to send?” She pushes a sleeve up to display the symbols. They’ve settled down now, covering about half of all her skin. Most of them have been identified and translated, but their ultimate purpose still makes little sense.

“Oooh, my Bible. Written into my children. I knew you’d have freedom one day.”

“It’s tied to our escape?” Alec asks. “How’d you manage that from twenty years back?”

“Age. Development. Thinking for yourself.”

White makes an unhappy noise again. “A perverted version of the holy texts. It’s defilement just for outsiders to know it, let alone change it and attach it to these… things.”

Sandeman tips his head up to look straight at White. “My sons. My lost sons. You were the first I wrote. Help my other children, for they do not have wisdom.” He leaned back at that, staring at the ceiling. Max gets the sense that it was all they were going to get out of him for now. But it’s more than expected from when she first walked into the room.

White recoils from the shriveled figure in front of them, almost toppling over his bound feet. “You’re demented. A crazy old man who got even crazier. Is this what you wanted, 452? Does it give you freaks the answers you want?”

It doesn’t, not for Max. But she knows it will give solace to the others. Most of the transgenics take comfort in their purpose in life, even if it’s cruel and inhuman. And it is the same for Ames White, she realizes. He was devoted to his mission, one that only ended in death.

“Good enough for now,” she replies. “Think about our father’s words, White. If there’s hope for us freaks, there’s hope for you too. You’re not as different as you think. Different branches of the same stalk.”

It’s a leap of faith, disguised as instinct. All Max has ever done is hope that her faith is true.

 

6/White and Max.

 

The abominations don’t let White go, even after his promised cooperation with Sandeman. Typical, but for once White doesn’t blame them for their pessimism. Max is having a spirited debate with the other monstrosities whether to kill him or not. She’s defending him, sort of, a move even he thinks is foolish. As usual, White feels nothing about his potentially ignoble end. _What is is what will be._

It takes a second before he notices that he’s called her Max, even if only in his mind. Somehow, she’s slid over to the category of person. Enemy person, but no longer a thing.

She comes into his room after awhile and sits next to him, silently watching his tied-up form. Pretty boy 494 hangs out by the door, warily at an attack-ready position, as if he’ll break his bonds and jump at her at any moment. Which White very well might, but they’ve exerted a curious hold over him. Perhaps if he establishes a rapport, a part of his mind considers, Max will reveal some little thing about his son.

“Who are you?” she finally asks.

He doesn’t know what she means.

“I know your real name,” she continues. “I know your fake name. But why do you bother with all this cardboard hate? Purity’s so important you’ll cut your own throat? You’re one of us now.”

“No,” he croaks. “Father created you all to thumb his nose at people like me. _We_ are the future, 494. A demented tattoo doesn’t change that.”

She rushes in with that lightening-fast body speed, stopping only inches from his face. “My name is Max,” she hisses. “I don’t call you Government Goon Number 127, now do I? Get over yourself, Ames Sandeman White. You’re not any better than us or any other human, and you never were.”

“You stole my son, _Max._ _”_

“You murdered children, _White_. You exposed us all to a lynch-happy mob. You want a ‘thanks, here, have my barcode’ now? And as for your son, you were the one who tried to kill him too, and voluntarily let him rot in a prison you helped maintain. Just like our dear old Dad.”

She pulls up one of his sleeves, exposing the unholy marks on his skin. “What happens when we send proof of you to the Conclave? When they take the skin and sequence it and find out your a freak like us? Ray too, probably. You know there’s no going home, not now.”

“I’m aware.” He clears his throat. “Max. Do what you need to do.”

He thinks it’ll be the end. He hopes she’ll do her job and finish him, because he knows he’ll never be able to do it himself. But White should have predicted that 452 wouldn’t release him into death, not his, nor risk theirs.

“Yeah, no, not today. Not my style.”

She looks disappointed in him, in fact. It’s so odd that he cares.

“You’re not going to keep him here, are you Max?” says 494. “I mean, come on, do we have to babysit Mr. Supposed Bad-Ass for all eternity?”

“Nope. Cut him loose out the South gate. The one with all the reporter drones, where Dix like to smoke cigars and smile for the paparazzi. Make sure his shirt is off for the pictures.”

Max pats him on the head. “Some day, when you’ve accepted who you are, maybe we’ll open the door for you. Because all the Freaks are welcome in Terminal City, even with blood on our hands. That’s _our_ Conclave, White. You can pick death, or you can pick life and moving forward. Choose wisely.”

He still can’t face this. Not now, possibly not ever. But the new religious words burn into his arm, hidden in the shadows on his son for only age to emerge. A message from their father.

_Life, in every form and shape and creed, is holy._

 

 


End file.
